Aerial geographic survey work for the agricultural and oil industries incur the logistics and costs of personnel to operate and maintain the air vehicle as well as collect and process the associated data. These costs are typically compounded by need for a substantial amount of this work to be performed at, or relatively near to, the location of the survey, which typically is well removed from any population centers. As a result it is advantageous to increase automation, reliability (reduce complexity), range, and capability of an air vehicle and support system for performing such data retrieval and processing tasks.